Spartacus Read Free Page A

roads to every corner of the world. Another nation would live a thousand years and build one third-rate road which perhaps connected its major cities. With Rome it was different. “Build us a road!” said the Senate. They had the skill. The engineers plotted it; contracts were handed out and the construction men took it under way; then the labor gangs built that road like an arrow to wherever it had to go. If a mountain stood in the way, you got rid of the mountain; if there was a deep valley, you flung a bridge across the valley; if there was a river, you bridged the river. Nothing halted Rome and nothing halted the Roman road.

    This highroad, upon which these three light-hearted young people were travelling south from Rome to Capua, was called the Appian Way. It was a well-built, broad road of alternate layers of volcanic ash and gravel, and surfaced with stone. It was made to last. When the Romans put down a road, they laid it not for this year or the next, but for centuries. That was how the Appian Way was laid down. It was a symbol of the progress of mankind, the productivity of Rome, and the enduring capacity of the Roman people for organization. It stated quite clearly that the Roman system was the best system mankind had ever devised, a system of order and justice and intelligence. The evidence of intelligence and order was everywhere, and the people who travelled the road took it so much for granted that it hardly registered upon their minds.

    For example, distance was specified, not estimated. Every mile of the way was marked by a milestone. Each milestone gave the pertinent information a traveller needed to know. You knew at any point precisely how far you were from Rome, from Formiae, from Capua. Every five miles, there was a public house and stables, where one could find horses, refreshments, and, if necessary, shelter for the night. Many of the public houses were quite magnificent, with broad verandas where drinks and food were served. Some had baths, where weary travellers could refresh themselves, and others had good, comfortable sleeping quarters. The newer public houses were built in the style of Greek temples, and they added to the natural beauty of the scenery along the way.

    Where the ground was flat, marsh or plain, the road was terraced, with the right of way rising ten or fifteen feet above the surrounding countryside. Where the ground was broken or hilly, the road either cut its way through or crossed gorges on stone arches.

    The road proclaimed stability, and over the surface of the road flowed all the elements of Roman stability. Marching on the road, soldiers could do thirty miles in a single day and repeat that same thirty miles day after day. Baggage trains flowed along the roads, loaded with the goods of the republic, wheat and barley and pig iron and cut lumber and linen and wool and oil and fruit and cheese and smoked meat. On the road were citizens engaged in the legitimate business of citizens, genteel folk going to and from their country places, commercial travellers and pleasure travellers, slave caravans going to and from the market, people of every land and every nation, all of them tasting the firmness and the orderliness of Rome’s rule.

    And at this time, alongside the road a crucifix was planted every few feet, and on every crucifix, a dead man hung.
     

IV
     
    The morning turned out to be warmer than Caius had expected it to be, and after a while, the smell of the dead became quite unpleasant. The girls soaked their handkerchiefs with perfume and sniffed constantly, but that could not shut out the sudden waves of sweet and sickening smell which floated across the road, nor could it prevent a reaction to this smell. The girls were sick, and Caius finally had to drop behind and go to the side of the road and relieve himself. It almost spoiled the morning.

    Fortunately, there were no crucifixes within half a mile of the public house where they stopped to lunch, and though